Let me say right from the start that I think the 2013 Ghana Music Awards was better organized than most of what we have seen lately. Charterhouse did a good job but even with the improved organization, there were still a lot more gaps that seem never to go away regardless of how old the GMAs grow.
TIMING
So can we start this red carpet nonsense at say 7pm; it runs for say 1 hour and then the show starts at say 8pm so we don’t need to stay till half past 2 in the morning for the biggest award of the night to be given out?
Elsewhere in the world these sorts of awards are timed and tied to TV hours. Organizers make money and gain sponsorships because of the eyeballs they get. I don’t recall the Oscars or Grammy going on for 7 hours. If we could have a better timing regime and stick to it perhaps it will help grow the awards.
I acknowledge that our sickening sense of time is still with us but really if we don’t have organizers of events like this work with time to instill some much needed discipline into government officials and ‘celebrities’ then we may never learn. Imagine red carpet starting at an advertised time of say 7pm, and then our big stars stroll in at 9pm with no cameras there to capture them…these folks like attention so the lack of it like this will make them keep to time at the next event.
We should be able to finish the awards in 3 hours, tops, 4. I think.
RED CARPET
We want to do red carpet so that is fine, let’s do it. But can we learn to do it right, and whiles at it be mindful of the time too? Confidence Haugen was a flop last year. This year, she was a mess. A complete disgrace. An absolute misfit who should not be tried again…EVER! Unless of course she proves that she has learned what she ought to have learned last year and proves it. No point giving people roles merely based on their names.
First of all for live red carpet interviews like this you will need a team of producers who identify guests and alert the interviewer about who is coming next. It seems we didn’t have producers or if they were there then they probably didn’t do their job well or didn’t even know what their jobs were. The onus was therefore on the interviewers to know these people or even if they didn’t, pretend they do and chit-chat for awhile.
We had instances where Confidence would ask an artiste “Are you a musician? What is your name? What song have you sung?” I felt embarrassed listening to her. Awful. Even for those she knew, she had to ask silly questions as though she was not paying attention.
Charterhouse might have hoped that Ms. Haugen would learn a bit after her debacle from last year but obviously she’s been too busy to bother about learning anything. See, let’s get this straight: the act of interviewing is one which is taught and learned. If you don’t know how to do it, you can learn it. If you refuse to learn it, you will not know it. Confidence Haugen does not know it, she does not want to learn it, so don’t use her!
MCing
KOD is one of my favorite MCs. He did better with his opening act at the Ghana Music Week than he did at the Ghana Music Awards though. He is nonetheless a fine chap but I think he gets too excited sometimes and it makes him seem all over the place when that happens.
What was that unnecessary bootlicking of the Ovation chap for? I have nothing against the man but I don’t like it when he’s seemingly worshipped at literally every Charterhouse event especially by MCs. It is as if they have been ordered to mention his name and to talk to him. We all know about the “Nigerianess” of Charterhouse. It is one we may not want to talk too much about but it sure gets irritating when we have Nigerians feeling bossy in Accra. This is not Lagos or Abuja or Warri or Ikeja. This is Accra. And Accra is in Ghana.
Eazzy was good, I must add. KOD’s style with picking up from the audience was however very dry and predictable. I also feel they should have used Lilwin a little more than they did. Benny Blanco saved the red carpet a bit, I must add. My thoughts.
AWARDS
We all expected R2Bees to sweep the awards and they rightfully did. Odo, Walahi, Bayla Trap were all fantastic joints that most of us loved. However not everything was as predictable, and controversy reared its heard again. This time round, I sided with it.
Obviously one of the lowest points of this year is the Best Collaboration Award given Trigmatic and Herty Borngreat. I hope Herty looks back at the awards then she will realize “her fans” know she didn’t deserve this.
How does Herty Borngreat and Trigmatic win Best Collaboration when Asem and Kwabena Kwabena’s Bye Bye track was there? The Herty\Trig collabo was the weakest in the category in my opinion. No one should spew that ‘did you vote’ noise into my ear.
I have nothing against her but Herty in my opinion is just a secular artiste who has a cloak of a gospel artiste over her head. When I hear a gospel singer use the word ‘perform’ severally, then I know they are not Ministers of God’s word, but some secular acts camouflaging as gospel acts. Let’s leave that discussion for another day. I don’t think she deserved the gospel artiste of the year. Cwesi Oteng and Omane Acheampong were there you know.
Then there was Bandana apparently pulling a Kanye West with his own remix. First time I heard the expression Shata Wale was at the awards. I don’t know why he thought the award was his and he just had to show up to pick it. I have seen some screen shot that showed that he had the most votes. I can’t vouch for its veracity. But even if it were true do you pour invectives on everyone because you didn’t win? He then takes his disgraceful act to his Twitter page (for a supposed big artiste as he sees himself having less than 2000 follows should be embarrassing) where he has dissed everyone he feels is making him not get awards. Funny thing is, dude says he doesn’t need the awards nor the cash, yet he is upset not to have gotten them.
Indeed awards may always come with controversies but I think some of them can be easily avoided. May be Herty did a lot of work to get her ‘fans’ to vote for her. She obviously ‘meant the awards paaa’ so if votes were all that mattered then maybe we should not be too hard on her. I just don’t see how that joint with Trig beats Asem and Kwabena Kwabena’s Bye bye in content, popularity, delivery and all that technicalities you may want to throw in.
EMPTY SEATS
First time I heard the term ‘seat filler’ was in a movie with same title starring Duane Martin and Kelly Rowland. Folks, in the. Oscars and things you don’t see empty seats because the organisers fill these seats with regular folks who are not stars. We did see a lot of empty seats last night and that doesn’t look good for TV nor for the image of the show.
I am sure those were reserved seats. Typical of us, some people had said they will attend and had pretended they had lost their watches so Charterhouse had empty seats right in the middle waiting for them and the show goes on.
PERFORMANCES
ECG took my lights when Amandzeba and Manifest were on stage. From what I picked up on social media, those two rocked. Same goes for the old hiplife folks. Kontihene in particular seemed to have received lots of plaudits from social media.
I know its a night to honour our musicians and all but were they not almost too many artistes on the bill? Methinks they were really a lot and that contributed to the show dragging. We didn’t need to have so many of them. The very biggest hits over the year were those we should have made room for.
I loved the opening act though. Chief Mommen and Efya and our sax dude rocked. It is really cool to embrace spoken word again. Who knows, I may be tempted to start doing poetry again.
Having said all this, we do accept the fact that our artistes have a lot to learn on how to truly perform. They generally suck. Truth be told. Yes, we have improved. Have we improved a lot? No. Can we improve some more? Absolutely.
LIGHTING
Did we not have too much disco lights on stage? Methinks we did. Even watching from home I was tempted to waer sunglasses at midnight. I felt for those in the auditorium.
RIFFRAFFS ON STAGE
We still don’t have a way to control all these nuisances and riffraff who follow award winners to the stage? They now even grab mics and spew rubbish too?
Come on!
The GMA is 14 years not 1 year old. It is about time we curbed that nonsense. It is totally disgraceful. We have allowed hangers on to now think it is okay to jump on stage when ‘their’ artistes win. They have gone further now to actually grab mic and spew nonsense? Why was Commotion, a self proclaimed manager and MC, doing telling us the life story on an artiste? And then Nana Yaw Boakye of Talk of GH, by virtue of being a TM boy also grabs a mic! Seriously?
Elsewhere….and I will keep going elsewhere cos we are not learning enough from what we see in the US and UK…I don’t recall ever hearing anyone aside an award winner even attempt to speak. The few cases crews like G-Unit and Young Money ‘invade’ stages, there’s even some organized twist to it. But down here, we behave like some uncivilized bunch who have just being thrown into town. The proverbial Johnny Just Come is actually better enlightened.
May be we should tell winning artistes that when their followers invade the stage they will lose their prize money. No one likes to lose things like money, especially for such frivolous acts by a bunch of people who actually depend on you for occasional 5 cedis.
CURTAINS DOWN
All in all I think it was a fun event. People like me and many others enjoyed ourselves on Facebook and Twitter and considering how the event dragged at some points, it was really cool watching from one’s bed or couch. Let’s get;
1. The awards start early so it can end early. It shouldn’t run for 7 hours.
2. Get the red carpet thingy on point by using trained, experienced people. Benny Blanco was okay. Confidence should never come back. There’s Caroline, Nana Aba, and tonnes of lady MCs that would have done a beautiful job.
3. Limit the number of performances. this is the case where too much meat spoils the soup. Get the truly outstanding songs in the year and not just names without hits.
4. If VIPs won’t come, their spaces should be filled. It’s embarrassing having empty seats at a big gig like this. We could explore the idea of ‘seat fillers’ too.
5. If VIPs will come and sit in the front like someone forced them to be there, can we consider shipping them to the back, please?
6. Cut out riff raffs from invading the stage. Let artistes pay for the misbehavior of their fans just as football teams suffer when their fans disrupt games.
Charlie you dey write! Ridee dea…you leff me kraaa….Good Piece!
Well said kg
I just love the way u write! Succintly! I felt U were “speaking” my mind. It is as if Confidence paid Charterhouse again to host the show….. Ughhh
On point sir..well spoken and elaborated.. Some good lighting on the band during live performance will have been nice.. They were packed in the corner, you couldn’t even tell which band was playing.. After all its all about music and our roots started with Live Music…
Eii Confidence doesn’t agree if you oo… if you read her comments on twitter and facebook this morning. She thinks people are just ‘hating’ as she puts it…
You have informed me, truly and aptly it seems… Pleasure reading you. Will be following
Hope organisers read this then learn from their mistakes.
Apt. You just poured out my thoughts. I agree perfectly with you
Kwame on point. But one last thing. One of the funniest commercials i have ever seen or heard of is the “Did u vote” nonsense. So if someone had gone for a loan to outvote R2Bee’s )d) n Whalai so this Anago Charterhouse wants to tell us they would have gone ahead to give that the person the award? Incredible!
As for Herty Born”Bribe” the least said about her the better. Gospel Artiste of the year? Seriously? Ok i leave it as it is! She must have voted a million times. And then to add salt to injury she takes Best Collabo! Ah! Na Charterhouse koraaa why? What dey wrong them? So what happened to Bye Bye, Bela Trap,? Naaaaaa!
Anyway e be dema awards so make them do what dey want.
My understanding is that the best collabo had 70p coming from the public and 30p from the board. Herty meant the award so ostensibly had more public votes.
I couldnt agree more with you on the Herty Borhgreat thing. Infact that was a total scam and I hope the organisers come out to explain in details the criteria used in arriving as such a horrendous decision. Thumbs up KG!!
kudos nyc piece but u didn’t say anything abt all de “disco lights” on stage
Beautiful piece. I live in Germany and I must confess I have been following your blog for sometime now because you speak what you feel is right which is a great thing. I managed to see the live stream of the Awards Show and eventhough it did make my evening, I was a bit disappointed and equally criticised the entire organisation. Thanks for shedding more light on the bits I missed.
Good piece there Kwame. But guys, can we be a bit more enlightened and stop this Charterhouse-Nigeria nonsense? For Heavens sake, Chinese, Lebanese, British, French, Russian and even Sudanese own and run businesses here too. So what are we talking about? Again, if an MC is asked to introduce an act from the audience so the stage could be set for an act and the MC chooses to interview someone, how is the event organiser to blame? Hetty Borngreat’s winning of the best collabo was a big shock to me too. I swear. How? But I see no reason why organisers shd be blamed. Ever heard of KPMG? The dudes hired to certify the pink sheets? Maybe we shd ask them. Or maybe we shd rather set the new agenda of getting CHARTERHOUSE to scrap the public votes for certain categories. Confidence wld hv made a great guest to be interviewed on the red carpet, not to interview people. I agree she didnt do that well. Kwame was more than right on that one. As for Bandana, hmmmmmm. The least said, the better. And abt the show starting late, why can’t we, as Ghanaians also learn to be disciplined enough to attend shows early? My ticket was 100 Cedis. I went early and got a good seat upstairs. Beautiful view. As at 7pm the gates were open, the organisers were ready, but auditorium was empty. How many seat fillers shd they hire? Are we willing to have the cost of the tickets raised so those seat fillers can be paid? Lets just learn to be disciplined. For me, this was the best VGMA’s ever and though there may have been a few MINIMAL lapses, I think we should cut the organisers some slack and deal with idiots like Bandana who are disgracing the art of Showbiz in Gh. I am not a charterhouse fan cuz of an experience a relative had with them on Stars of the future, but as a Ghanaian, i honestly think they did the entire nation proud with that beautiful show last Saturday. Come on people. Pls be honest small…nipa y3 adea, os3 ayeyi. My thoughts.
right on point kg, i also aluguintuguin shd hv bn appreciated a bit…. instead of dis secular artiste of the yr thing to borngreat.. medaase…
well said bro…. in d states where we like to compare ourselves, you have entertainment journalist hosting the red carpet moment. now i dun know what confidence know about journalism bt her questions were as if shes in class one. she either learns to return or she leaves it for a more qualified person who knows these stars and the relevant questions to ask
This helps a lot. I couldn’t watch the show. Great job.
Well said man
i hope Kwame Gyan reviews ALLLLLL events that take place in Ghana in this light, not just Charterhouse events. Show us that you are truly objective and not subjective…..we are watching!!!
When I have the time and I am present at the event and it interests me, then why not. I didn’t write about this cos it’s a CH thingy but cos I wanted to cos it interested me.
The light were just too much. Flashing lights can trigger an epileptic episode.